Review Blog

Oct 04 2010

Flyaway by Lucy Christopher

Chicken House, 2010. ISBN 9781905294763.
(Age 10+) Highly recommended. One day when
Isla and her father are birdwatching they see a flock of swans and try
and trace their path. Her father suffers a
heart attack and collapses and Isla manages to get him to hospital.
There she meets Harry, a boy
who has leukaemia and together they watch a lone wild swan, separated
from her flock, on the lake
near the hospital. The swan seems almost magical and Isla is convinced
that saving her will help her father and Harry get well.
Christopher has beautifully portrayed her cast of characters, and I
felt as if I knew them all personally. Her descriptions of family life,
especially the sibling rivalry between Isla and her brother Jack
and the broken relations with her grandfather, who can't get over the
death of his wife, made them come alive. Especially poignant was the
loving father and daughter relationhip. Harry's patient acceptance of
his
illness and his relationship with Isla, who is just starting to become
interested in boys, is handled well.
The theme of flight and the idea of a swan song, where the birds take
the soul of a dying person into the sky, dominates the story. Isla is
determined to rescue the swan that has become detached from its flock,
and is sure that its rescue will mean her father and Harry will become
well. Her school project for art, called Flight, also carries through
the theme of dying swans, as she uses the wings of a stuffed swan to
recreate some of Leonardo da Vinci's ideas for a flying machine. Some
of the most memorable scenes in the book are when Isla runs with the
lost swan, flapping the wings on her machine and hoping that it will
take flight.
Christopher's writing is superb, the chapters are short, and the prose
is full of imagery and vivid descriptions. I won't easily forget this
heart-wrenching story of friendship, love between a father and daughter
and the glory of swans.
Pat Pledger